Juror From Chicago: ‘Zimmerman Got Away With Murder’

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CHICAGO (CBS) – A juror who acquitted George Zimmerman of all charges in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year has broken her silence about the nationally publicized case.

The woman, who until now had been identified only as Juror B29, spoke to Good Morning America on Thursday to give her opinion of the case.

“George Zimmerman got away with murder, but you can’t get away from God,” the juror, who used only the first name Maddy, told the television show. “And at the end of the day, he’s going to have a lot of questions and answers he has to deal with.”

Maddy said under Florida law there simply wasn’t enough evidence to prove murder.

“You can’t put the man in jail even though in our hearts we felt he was guilty,” the juror said. “We had to grab our hearts and put it aside and look at the evidence.”

The woman moved to Florida from Chicago just five months before she was selected as a juror. Maddy, 36, is a mother to eight children and works as a nursing assistant. Of Puerto Rican descent, Maddy was the only minority on the jury, which consisted of five other women.

Initially, Maddy said she wanted to convict Zimmerman of second-degree murder, which could have landed the 29-year-old neighborhood watchman behind bars for the rest of his life. But on the second day of deliberations, she realized there wasn’t enough proof.

“That’s where I felt confused, where if a person kills someone, then you get charged for it,” Maddy told the show. “But as the law was read to me, if you have no proof that he killed him intentionally, you can’t say he’s guilty.”

Zimmerman maintained he killed Martin on Feb. 26, 2012 out of self-defense.

Maddy said life has been difficult since the jury reached the not guilty verdict, even saying she owes Martin’s parents an apology because she feels “like I let them down.”

“It’s hard for me to sleep, it’s hard for me to eat because I feel I was forcefully included in Trayvon Martin’s death,” she said. “And as I carry him on my back, I’m hurting as much Trayvon’s Martin’s mother because there’s no way that any mother should feel that pain.”